


Petroleum Origins

by etherrealoblivion



Category: Back to the Future (Movies)
Genre: wrote this and submitted it as an english grade yolo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:47:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29210610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etherrealoblivion/pseuds/etherrealoblivion
Summary: For the first time, Marty was stuck in a paradox that had nothing to do with time. Well… very little to do with time.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	Petroleum Origins

The soft rumbling of the engine shook Marty's legs. His jeans were much looser around the waist than they had been a week ago. That's what happens when one is stranded on a prehistoric Pangea without any hunting or gathering skills. No food; no belly fat; no warmth; no energy to hunt; no food.

For the first time, Marty was stuck in a paradox that had nothing to do with time. Well… very little to do with time.

Bumps of gravel and small bones did little to ease the effort the old car was putting up with. It barely drove well in 1985. It surely wasn't going to do better in 180 million B.C.

A horrid spluttering noise echoed around the inside of the car as it jerked steadily to a stop.

"Dammit!" Marty jumped from the car, nearly hitting his head on the slow-open door for the hundredth time. 

The fuel wasn't working. Correction — the crushed-up animal bones and plant-life weren't working as fuel. To be fair, it seemed simple enough. Gasoline came from petroleum which came from ancient crushed-up organisms. It  _ should _ have been simple enough. If only….

_ If only the Doc were here, _ Marty thought bitterly, removing the gooey, melted remnants of life-forms millions of years older than him. Hopefully touching them wouldn't rip a hole in the space-time continuum.

He slid to the ground, hanging his head between his legs in defeat before snapping it back to bang against the tough metal doors.

" _ Think, _ McFly! Think!" Though Biff was an asshole, his words could be pretty motivating. "What would the Doc do? Well, he'd find some genius way to provide me with a huge supply of gasoline and get us both home in time for supper, then put some goddamn emergency gas stores in the Delorean so that we'll always have some in case of…."

Marty trailed off, a bizarre and delightful idea springing to life in his mind. 

No, that couldn't work. Surely, that wasn't how the laws of time played out…. Was it?

"Well, worth a shot."

Marty shut his eyes tightly, placed his fingers on the temples of his head, and concentrated hard.

A few years ago, around the time they'd first met, Doc had shown him a memory technique to use whenever you had something really important to remember. He'd called it ' spaced repetition ' and made Marty practice it fifty times before he let up.

First, Marty picked something that he did every single day. Say… brush his teeth, for example. Then, he needed to trace a line of his thought process towards the task that he needed to do. It worked better when spoken aloud.

"Brushing teeth. Toothpaste. Where does toothpaste come from? Doc always said it came from crushed animal bones. Doesn't gasoline also come from crushed animal bones? Gasoline! I need gasoline in a hundred and eighty million b.c!"

There was a resounding snap through the air and fire set in two straight rows zooming past him. Setting the fire, was a DeLorean. Not the one he was leaning against, drained of gas, but an identical one that looked a great deal better than his. It screeched to a halt about fifty feet away and Marty shot to his feet, not sure what would happen next. 

The door on the right side of the DeLorean flew open, then the one on the left. Marty froze in place as he watched two figures draw near in the cloud of dust. When it finally settled, Marty gasped… both of them did.

"It worked!"

"Great Scott!"

"What the f…?"

In front of him, only a few paces away, stood Doc Brown and himself. Same height, same face (though it was the reverse of what he usually saw in the mirror), same confused expression that he had no doubt he was currently wearing. Only the clothes distinguished them. This Marty had much cleaner clothes, without any rips or tears. But it wasn't a past version of him. It was a future version. 

Actually, there was one more difference. This Marty had a large cut on his forehead.

"This is astounding! The paradoxes of this event should set the universe into cataclysmic failure!" Doc circled Marty — the present Marty — with wide eyes while the future Marty stared on. "How is this possible?"

The future Marty spoke in a voice that Marty had trouble believing was his own (far too squeaky). "I told you, I used the memory thing. The... uh, 'spacial recognition'."

" Spaced repetition ! Great Scott! I suppose such a paradox would work if one takes into account all the parallel timelines destroyed with a simple…. Unless… my theory of time travel is completely incorrect! Perhaps a fixed timeline is actually a more accurate theory of quantum physics. But that doesn't explain how you managed to change your timeline so that your parents—"

"Doc!" The future Marty interrupted, grabbing his shoulders. "We're on a schedule here."

"Of course, of course."

Doc jogged back to the Delorean and returned with a large tank of gasoline. Marty's heart skipped a beat.

"Take this, return to nineteen-eighty-five and remember to brush your teeth!" 

And with that, the Doc and the future Marty ran away back to the future Delorean. The future Marty yelled, "Remember to do the laundry!" just before the car crackled and jumped into the future. 

Marty let out a huge breath, now finally alone again. He took three seconds to calm down, slow his heart rate back to a human speed before he jumped into action. He poured as little gasoline into the tank as he could, making sure to screw the cap on tightly before climbing in the car.

"If this works, I'm buying myself enough gas for a lifetime."

The key shook as Marty stuck it in the ignition. He closed his eyes, praying to every God he could think of that his future self wasn't a cruel prankster.The engine turned over and the car pushed off with a start. With a whoop, Marty slowly lowered his foot onto the gas pedal, letting the speedometer crawl towards the necessary eighty-eight miles per hour.

Marty heard the sizzle of the flux capacitor snapping to attention seconds before his surroundings changed. A solid wall of a gigantic face appeared in front of him and he had no time to scream before the car slammed into the fallen billboard. Luckily, it was mostly paper and rotten wood so there weren't too many dents on the car to deal with. The same, however, could not be said for Marty's head as the car came to a screeching stop and his forehead slammed into the windshield.

Everything went dark. The universe short-circuited briefly and adapted to the paradox. Across the galaxy in a little sector where time isn’t considered, a kind surge shot out towards Earth and restored everything to its natural order. Marty awoke sixty minutes later with no recollection of the temporal paradox he’d created.

He did, however, notice that the DeLorean was running low on gas. The only remainder of memory he possessed of the past 24 hours was a faint urge to brush his teeth.

Somewhere far across the galaxy, a star system quaked in what could only be classified as a chuckle.


End file.
